


Deleted Ending from The Grace Machine

by kisahawklin



Series: The Grace Machine [2]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Castiel validation, Deleted Scenes, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-30
Updated: 2016-05-30
Packaged: 2018-07-10 12:11:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,374
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6984565
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kisahawklin/pseuds/kisahawklin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Chuck swoops in and tells all.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Deleted Ending from The Grace Machine

**Author's Note:**

> I wanted someone to tell Cas that he's special, so I wrote it. It doesn't really fit on the end of the fic, but I still like it, so I'm putting it here. Really rough - no edits or beta on this one, kids. 
> 
> Oh, and I did get kripked on the ending - God handing the world off to the Winchesters.

A trail of dust catches Sam's eye then, a car coming down the road that's not even twenty feet away. "We should probably go," Sam says, testing out his wings. They're weak. He glances at Cas to see if he has enough strength to carry them. 

"You won't be able to fly," someone shouts. It came from the car, stopped by the side of the road. It's a bright blue Prius, and Sam's just curious enough to approach it. He's shut the gates of Heaven and Hell and somehow, not died. There's not much that worries him anymore.

"Hello?" Sam asks. The sun is glinting off the car, making it impossible to see inside. "Did you say something?"

"Yes, Sam," the voice says, a familiar voice but not one Sam can place, "I said, you won't be able to fly."

 _Chuck._

Holy shit. Sam leans down, gets his face right up in Chuck's. "Where have you been?" 

"Here and there," Chuck says. 

"Dean! Cas!" Sam shouts. "Get over here!"

"We thought you were dead," Sam says. "We looked all over for you. And then Kevin…"

Chuck smiles up at him, through the annoyed, disbelieving rant Dean is giving as he approaches the car. "There's a diner up the road," Chuck says. "I hear they have the best apple pie this side of Texas."

~~~

"Mmm," Chuck says as he takes another bite of his burger. "There are some things only a physical form is good for."

Sam looks down at his coffee. Food has never been that high on his list. It's fine, it's just… _food_. Touch is more his thing. Thinking about that last night in the bunker, however far away now, the way Cas explored his skin, tasted everything… he clears his throat and glances at Dean. He's covered in a cloud of anger, brick red and dark, dark grey, pissed off in a way that Sam knows can be dangerous. Sam stuffed him into the inside of the booth for a reason.

"So, Chuck," Dean drawls, poking his fork absently into the strawberry-rhubarb pie on his plate. "Where've you been?"

Chuck smiles, sad and still somehow not melancholy. "Around."

"Come on, man," Sam says. "You disappeared. We were worried."

"Mmhm," Chuck says, eating a fry smothered in mayonnaise. "Sorry about that. But listen, it was for the best. Once I took over, Chuck was pretty much gone. I had to send his soul to Heaven, give him rest. Isn't that what you boys want? Rest?"

Dean's quiet; clear of color, for the moment. The anger was blown away at Chuck's pronouncement. "You're…"

Sam had known, somewhere deep inside, what it meant that Chuck was still here even though Kevin had been called. He'd heard God's voice when he completed the trials the first time. Not his voice, exactly, but his _intent_ , and he got the same feeling from Chuck. "He's God, yeah," Sam says. 

Cas is staring sullenly at his root beer float, not acknowledging the conversation at all. He's angry too, though it feels very different from Dean's anger. His is more personal; and there's hurt in it, a deep well of grief. Abandonment. Sam can feel it clear as day, and he knows all too well what that feels like. 

"I went looking for you," Cas says. "I searched the Earth and all the realms for you."

"I know, Castiel," Chuck says with a smile. "And I watched you every step of that journey, wishing I could reveal myself to you."

"How could you?" Dean's anger is back, white-hot rage, at least partially for Cas now. Sam remembers his search for God, too, how his faith was shaken. "How dare you just _leave_ and let all those innocent people die in the apocalypse?"

Sam's not angry. He glances at Chuck, wondering why it doesn't upset him. He remembers seeing some of this, when he died, understanding what God was doing and why, but he can't recall exactly what, now. Just that everything had been part of God's plan, and that he had been watching over them the entire time. He doesn't know that either Dean or Cas will get it, though, and it's not like he doesn't want an explanation from God himself, so he stays quiet.

"I didn't leave," Chuck says. "And if you think I answered prayers before like that, you are sadly mistaken. I have always let what was going to happen, happen – with three exceptions."

Now Sam is curious. They were told by Joshua that it was God who saved them after they let Lucifer out of the cage; now he wants to know if that's true.

Chuck shakes his head. "I claimed credit for that, but it was Raphael who pulled you out of that church. The angels were going to keep you alive until you'd served their purpose. No need to worry about the two of you back then."

Sam can feel Dean's anger shift sideways into confusion. He had been The Righteous Man for a little while, a true purpose to his life, and that time was strained between them.

"I saved Castiel," Chuck says, and they all turn to look at Cas. "You will never know how precious you are, Castiel. I couldn't bear to see you hurt at Raphael's hands the way you were. And then again at Lucifer's. And once, even, at your own."

"Wait," Dean says. "You interfered because of _Cas_?"

Chuck smiles at him. "Don’t tell me you don't see how unique Castiel is." He glances at Sam but brings his knowing smirk back to Dean. "You knew that the moment you met him. And without him, neither you nor Sam would have been able to complete your own quests."

Sam thinks furiously back to that time. It was mostly a haze, with the demon blood, but he remembers Cas being cut off from Heaven and not being particularly helpful at the time. And then… and then Cas fought the entirety of Heaven that next year, keeping them out of the civil war for the most part. 

"Yes," Chuck says. "The second time I returned Castiel, it was too clear a message. I'd played favorites. It gave Castiel his sense of righteousness, and set the rest of the archangels against him. It was foolish of me." He stares at Cas. "But I couldn't help it." 

"Let me tell you a story about when I was a young God, still learning about all the powers of creation." Chuck signals the waitress with his coffee cup and she comes over and tops him off. "A slice of apple pie, please," he says, and Linda nods with a smile.

"The first thing I created was an angel. My perfect son, Michael. Obedient to me in all things, sure of purpose, his beautiful golden wings. He was glorious to behold. I created things for him to fight, a primitive game of GI Joes, setting him against leviathan. But I got bored. Michael only ever did what I told him to do. So I created his brother, Raphael. Raphael had free will. Still mostly obedient, but at least some latitude to make his own decisions. And he did. Including going down to the planet I'd just created and stomping around, killing animals for no reason, sticking his nose in where I'd just started thinking about creating another species. I called him back and he came, but he wasn't happy about it." 

Chuck takes a long sip of his coffee. "It's possible to fuck up on an epic scale, and then be unable to fix it," he says. "You Winchesters always try and fix your mistakes, but sometimes the only fixes make things worse. Raphael was obedient enough, so I didn't punish him, or look too closely at his bitterness."

"Instead, I created Lucifer. Even more free will than Raphael because I thought perhaps just the taste of it had made Raphael bitter. Of course Lucifer was even worse than Raphael, going down to my little petri dish and messing things up."

"Humans had only just started to become sentient, and they were by far more interesting to watch than the angels. I didn't interfere with humans because I wanted to see what they'd do; they were so unpredictable. And so was Lucifer; which is why I locked him away. Another poor decision in a long, storied career of bad decisions."

"I knew, though, that humans would need protection. I'd been creating angels one at a time, trying to find some mix of traits that would make them better than what they were. So Gabriel was next, and I added in compassion." Chuck smiles a little. "I miss Gabriel most of all," he says. "He was a shining light."

That's not really Sam's recollection of Gabriel, but he did come around in the end.

"And funny," Chuck says. "I hadn't given him the sense of humor, so that was just something spontaneous in him. I did give him compassion, though, and probably too much free will, since he left."

"I was really looking to create the perfect angel," Chuck says, raising an eyebrow at Cas. "So that I could create the host based off their likeness."

Chuck couldn't mean… Sam stares at Cas – Castiel, angel of the lord, who has wings that are _common as dirt_. "Cas," he breathes. "Holy shit, Cas, you're it – you're the angel all the rest of the angels are based off of."

Cas shakes his head. Sam can feel the denial, the steel wall keeping the idea away from Cas. But the more Sam thinks about it, the more he's sure he's right. "No, it makes sense. God only named a few of the angels – the rest of them took their names from their first vessels. Hannah told me that."

Chuck is smiling, watching Cas with interest. 

"No," Cas says. "No, that's impossible."

Chuck shrugs. "I did make a number more angels before I got it right, you know. The right mix of obedience, free will, compassion, and something else. You had the spark I was looking for, Castiel. Curiosity, kindness, who knows. Whatever it was, I never captured it again." Chuck swirls the dregs of his coffee in his mug, and Sam's heart rests in his throat while he waits for more. "I thought maybe it was your wings. No one ever had wings like yours."

Cas spreads his wings, circling one around himself, flexing it to flare the feathers at the tip. Now that Sam looks closer, Cas's wings aren't white with some kind of multi-colored sheen; they're diaphanous – and his grace and the universe and everything catches the light as the feathers move. The grace makes them seem white, and the various other things that show up give them their sheen. Sam's mesmerized. He can feel a similar sort of fascination coming from Dean, orangey-yellow bubbles of curiosity.

"I made the whole host in your image, Castiel," Chuck says, "and not one of them turned out with your spark. Or your wings." 

The table lapses into silence at this. They're all staring at Cas's wings, and Cas's mind is tripping over this new information. Sam knows the feeling well, the sensation of walking through the tumbling tunnel at the funhouse, no sure footing anywhere, all the benchmarks of your mental landscape thrown haphazardly around your psyche.

"The soul looks good on you, though," Chuck says, smiling for the first time like Chuck used to. It's weird, Sam not being able to call him just _God_ , even in his head, even though he's not even remotely like Chuck used to be. 

"Maybe your spark is the reason you can have one without losing your grace."

Sam pokes at his own piece of peach pie. "And how come Dean and I can have grace and souls?"

Chuck sighs. "I don't actually know _everything_ that's going to happen, you know. Your circumstances were… unusual. I might have pushed you back from Heaven a little bit too hard when Metatron locked the door. I hadn't meant to send you all the way back to your body, but once you were there, you were remarkable at finding ways to keep yourself alive. And then you found ways to change Dean, too, so, you know, congratulations on that."

 _Oh, shit._

Sam swallows, looking up sharply at Dean. Chuck laughs. "Please," he says. "As if I care about that sort of small-minded crap. You've both done worse before breakfast and it hasn't tainted your souls."

"So anyway," Chuck continues, like absolving them of all their sins is something that happens every day, "you sacrificed your humanity to close the gates of Heaven. And Cas's angelity."

"Angelity?" Dean asks. "That's a thing?"

Chuck shrugs. "Well, it is, though it didn't have a name until right now."

Sam states the obvious. "And that's why we didn't die." 

"Yup," Chuck says. "Though now you're both Powers. Well, all three of you, actually."

"Powers," Castiel says. "I thought they were a myth. A misnomer from an early human misunderstanding."

Chuck shrugs. "Maybe that's where the name came from. There has only ever been a Power on rare occasions that a human somehow obtains grace. No other human has survived very long. Even Sam and Dean here will have to find ways to mitigate their continuous grace production or eventually explode."

"Why now?" Cas asks. "Why did you come to us now, when we needed you all those other times? The apocalypse, the civil war, the leviathans?"

"You did just fine on your own, Castiel. I set you loose on the world and gave you the Winchesters. I knew things would work out." 

"But –"

Chuck wags a finger in front of Cas's face, and Cas's mouth hangs open in shock.

"I'm just here to say goodbye. Now that you've closed the gates of Heaven and Hell, I can take a real vacation. Or maybe start again. See if I can learn from my mistakes."

"But –"

"But nothing, Dean. This place is yours now. Take care of it."

Sam wants to add his own "but" but Chuck is gone, disappeared from the table like he never was, except the half-eaten piece of apple pie and nearly-empty mug of coffee.

~~~


End file.
